There's some relevant business wisdom: "what gets measured gets done". By aligning our educational institutions towards testing we created educational institut

There's some relevant business wisdom: "what gets measured gets done". By aligning our educational institutions towards testing we created educational institutions that teach the test and not the rest. Standardized testing is super important. I agree, though, it's a pretty poor proxy for how well schools are performing and who needs what... By way of example: schools with low-scoring test takers likely have environmental issues that impact school performance. The conclusion should likely be beefing up the budget and expanding the schools role to being more "community centers" full of social workers. Poverty is a cycle, individual disruptive elements in school hurt all students, and that little 'war on drugs' has removed a lot of the support structure we expect in those families... Reducing the budget of schools with students in bad situations who can't test properly because their students are in bad situations and therefore can't test properly seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. A prophecy that happens to align very nicely with the ideology and stated goals of the group that pushed "no child left behind".